COVID-19 Novartis response

In the face of a global crisis, Novartis has quickly mobilized R&D capabilities, medicines, clinical trials expertise and philanthropic aid to address the coronavirus pandemic.

Donations

Contributions upwards of USD 40 million to over 60 projects around the world that support local communities impacted by this crisis. These include major donations to strengthen medical infrastructure and provide on-site support in many countries.

Commitment to donate up to 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to support the global COVID-19 pandemic response. Sandoz, the Novartis generics and biosimilars division, is also maintaining prices on a basket of essential medicines that may help in the treatment of COVID-19.

External collaborations

We are undertaking several efforts to leverage our capabilities in discovery, development and scale-up manufacturing. We are partnering with multi-stakeholder external consortia, including:

Novartis is leading, partnering and supporting the identification of therapeutic candidates against coronavirus. We have hand-selected a library of compounds with activity against viral targets of relevance to COVID-19, and we’re working with a consortium of academic institutions and companies that is looking to screen compounds at an appropriate laboratory facility.

We are also spearheading a collaborative effort to make direct-acting anti-viral compounds to the coronavirus family, including COVID-19, SARS and MERS. This early-stage drug discovery work builds on the collaboration that formed the Novartis-Berkeley Center for Proteomics and Chemistry Technologies. The new open-science effort will target a piece of machinery that’s shared by several known coronaviruses.

Clinical investigations

Together with the research community, Novartis is assessing whether our clinical-stage investigational or approved medicines could be repurposed beyond their intended or approved indications to treat complications of COVID-19 disease.

Novartis plans to sponsor or co-sponsor multiple large clinical trials of its existing medicines as COVID-19 treatments, including hydroxychloroquine as well as Jakavi® (ruxolitinib), in collaboration with Incyte, and Ilaris® (canakinumab).